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Category Archives: NaNoWriMo

We are at day eighteen of NaNoWriMo, just a bit past halfway. I’m working through a quandary. I appear to have two stories going about my main character. I started by using flashbacks to explain why she is the way she is and the flashbacks have taken on a story of their own. Here is the quandary. If I split the story I will have to focus on one or the other. Both storylines are not dependent on each other, but they support each.

Am I the only one when is ready to scrap the entire thing and start over? I know this is the hard part. This is where the meat is put into the story. In all fiction books you get to the middle and this is where the magic swells into a whirlwind of words and emotion. The lover gets a heart broken, the hero fights the dragon and the detective finds the right clues.

We must keep going. Reevaluate your outlines and plot structures but do not quit. Make the word count and clean it up in December. It will be fine and at the end you may even have a novel that is worth giving to the world.

DO NOT STOP WRITING!

But wait! Isn’t life sort of like writing a book? We move through our days and we have goals and responsibilities that make us insecure. We put words on the pages of our loves. Sometimes it is a magical piece of prose and sometimes in is gibberish random thoughts that make no coherent sense. If we keep on living and keep on working to the end of the thing.Write to the end of the page. Make the goal the carrot on the stick that we follow, what would happen? We may be successful. We may end up happy. Imagine that? Happy people everywhere.

“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” – Gene Fowler

Like many writers I have pieces and parts of stories, novels, and poetry. I have scraps of characters, plots and settings all over the place. They are written on scraps of paper and in notes on my compete and in my phone. Most of which are complete ideas but not completely written. As I work through actually completing a novel I am learning just as much if not more about myself as I am about writing. For instance, did you know that you can procrastinate for several minutes just by staring inside the refrigerator even when you aren’t hungry? Or that If you snuggle your puppy taking a nap is easier than forming sentences?

I have discovered that I am an expert at not writing .I can find other things to do very easily. Not that writing is hard, it isn’t. Writing is the easy part. Writing and still living a normal life is not so easy. You still have to eat, sleep, spend time with loved ones, and work (unless you’re independently wealthy). I like to eat and spend time with family. I am not wealthy so I have a job that I love. When I sit down to write writing happens. I manage to sweat blood and get words down. The hardest part is getting the time to sit down in the first place.

I found that just making myself sit and write when I have time will get words out and stories will come to fruition. Even if I don’t want to sitting and writing something even nonsense is the best way to start. Once I start writing the stopping is not as difficult.

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